


You & Me

by BunnySiege



Category: Summer Camp Island (Cartoon)
Genre: Arguing, Awkwardness, Drama, Internal Conflict, Invasion of Privacy, Magical Accidents, Magical Bond, Mind Meld, Misunderstandings, Psychological Drama, Witchcraft, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23120890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BunnySiege/pseuds/BunnySiege
Summary: After Lucy forgets to study for her mid-summer test, she goes to Hedgehog to help cheat it. Hedgehog has just the solution, but messes the spell up  in a way that leaves them mentally entangled.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	1. You

Without adequate preparation, Hedgehog was sort of bad at magic. That much was pretty obvious. She needed a spell in front of her, typed in clear words, about five minutes of preparation, a wand and possibly some ingredients too. All of it added up to a camper that could sort of cast spells on things. I recalled Susie naming her a 'spell nerd' at some point, and I think that was a pretty good comparison. However, this time, I had to put myself in Hedgehog's hands. 

My problem was pretty unique among the campers. Despite my precious aardvark parents loving me more than anything else, they saddled me with a lot of summer work. Book reports mostly, but also, I had to take tests over math and stuff to make sure I'd been studying, to send back so that I could prove I wasn't slacking off. This was pretty easy for me, to dedicate two hours or so every day to studying to keep things fresh. But this time was different.

According to what Betsy had told me, since she'd be the one proctoring the test, I hadn't studied for a topic that would take up a third of the test this afternoon. Notably, it was about how waves worked. All sorts of them, from gamma to radio. I didn't know a lick about it, and I had the test in only a few hours. In a panic, I'd excused myself from the lunch hall, and walked towards Hedgehog's cabin. She was the only one who could help me.

Whenever I arrived she was fiddling with her radio equipment again, seeming to have directed her antennae across the Atlantic to see if she could get anything from the other side. I had no idea how radio worked, but that was why I needed her help. I knocked loudly, sweat building up on my forehead from walking so briskly in the hot sun. I only had a few hours, and I knew I couldn't possibly cram for everything that I needed to. For once in my life I'd need to cheat.

Beyond the door, some grumbling met my ears. A moment later the grumpy shrub rodent answered it. She appeared quite irritable, however her expression shifted when we locked eyes. I was breathing heavy, and I was obviously sweating in the midsummer heat. I took the lead in the conversation. Time was of the essence.

"Hey, Hedgehog. Uh, I need your help. Can I come inside?"

Her eyes looked around at my concern, scanning the area. Once the coast was clear, she motioned me inside. I didn't waste any time, hearing the door shut behind me as I took a seat in her desk chair. With a wave of her hand, as if to say 'okay, spill it.' I continued.

"Okay, so I have a test this afternoon that I need to cheat on. I had no idea that light and waves would be on the test, and so I didn't study. I need you to give me answers, because I know you know about this stuff. At some point I memorized all this stuff, but I don't think I can do well enough to answer a lot of the math questions to do with it."

Hedgehog leaned against her door, rubbing her chin. It appeared that she was weighing her options in this situation. We didn't get along perfectly, with us being the two big smarties on the island. But, we were still prettymuch friends. The boys on the island were either really stupid, overly sensitive, immature, or worse, musicians. It made sense we had a gravity even if it was only just because of proximity.

With a snap of her fingers, Hedgehog spoke.

"Sure I'll help you, Lucy. I think I know a spell. You owe me one though."

Physical relief washed over me, the tension that was nearly building into a headache where my neck met my head fading. With a deep breath, I knew that this would be okay. I wouldn't be forced to leave summer camp because I forgot to study something. Hedgehog saw me relax and held up a finger, a smile on her face.

"Remember, you totally owe me though. This is a super big thing! And I'm not supposed to be doing magic anyways, since Susie's mad at me."

The only thing I could think to do was shrug at her. I didn't really care about whatever she came up with. Staying on the island was a much higher priority in my book. I replied.

"Fine by me. I just care about staying on the island. I have lots of friends here and the books at the library are better than my local public library."

Hedgehog was barely listening as she went to her dresser drawer and got a bunch of markers out, rifling through them in search of things. She found a clump of what I could assume was her werewolf fur, markers, hair ties, and what looked like one of those crystals from the cave up in the mountains, where the waterslide went through. Around the crystal was copper wire. Protruding from either end of it were loops of the wire that looked just big enough to fit your finger inside. I had no idea what any of this was. This was magic, something I didn't bother studying. Mostly due to its lack of applicability outside the summer camp.

Hedgehog stepped behind me, starting to tie my hair back. This was starting to get a bit stranger than I thought it'd be, but this was hardly the weirdest I'd ever seen. The hair spells that required moonlight had that beat. Once she was finished pulling my hair back, Hedgehog uncapped one of the markers and' out to begin drawing on my forehead. I withdrew, questioning her.

"Woah there, you think they aren't gonna notice if you draw all over my face like a chalkboard?"

Hedgehog rolled her eyes, sighing. "It'll wash right off, trust me. It's only required to be on for the spell to work, then you can make it look like it never happened."

In my mind, that made a lot more sense all things considered. Without any further reservation, she drew some form of rune. With it squarely on my forehead, she then went to the mirror I'd been looking in, and drew hers to perfectly mimic my own.

All of this was bizarro-world logic to me. Nothing about this was scientific and was much more of a gut feeling, symbology mess. Not that I minded that, since it was helping me, but it was also my last resort.

Without further hesitation, Hedgehog slid her finger through one of the copper loops sticking off the end of the crystal. She then took one of her clumps of werewolf fur and stuck it to my hand carefully, before trying to slide my finger into the parallel copper loop. I obliged of course, not understanding one bit of what was going on. With everything seemingly in place, she spoke.

"Okay, look into my eyes while I talk to you, okay? We basically have to use the crystal to synchronize our thoughts for a second, and then we'll be on the same sort of mental radio station together. We'll be broadcasting, and receiving each other. Sort of like walkie-talkies, but really super far."

My mind sparked at the idea, and I felt an odd tap at the back of my head. Like I had just made some form of bizarre revelation. However I hadn't really learned anything new just now at all. She'd just been explaining to me how it worked. Once she began to talk again, I thought more about each word than I had been, hanging on each one.

"Once upon a time, there was a lonely silver wolf who lived alone on an island. She howled at the moon to bring her other wolves to play with, but the moon could not. What he could do, however, was give this silver wolf the ability to let others understand her, and see the world as she did. She spread this gift to others, bringing happiness to the nights that people would spend with her, and a different perspective of life, from her wolf eyes."

As her story continued I felt my mind envisioning a silver dog I'd seen running around on the island sometimes, and how genuinely lonely it looked even whenever it'd run away from people. My mind opened to the idea, and I imagined the story out. As this continued, the mental shift I felt in my head continued, until Hedgehog's voice stopped coming from her mouth. Rather, I heard her voice in my head:

'Some chose to look at her gift as a curse, and some chose to look at her gift as evil. The only way to make others understand was to turn them into a one of her own. Even whenever she finally convinced others to help her leave the island, she was soon driven back, swimming out to sea to the safety of it, where she now carefully rules as a queen of the people she gives the gift to this very day.'

My head reeled, and Hedgehog let out an audible laugh. She clearly really enjoyed how disconcerting this felt for me. I could feel her mirth spill out into my own mental space, and I let out a small chuckle too. What wasn't there to laugh about? Nothing was wrong, the spell was working like intended after all. I caught myself. Was it? Hedgehog similarly felt my line of questioning, and that told me that we weren't just exchanging mental voice messages. We were distributing emotions too. I was glad that this was all temporary.

Without much more hesitation, Hedgehog got our fingers out of the wire loops, let me use her bathroom to wash my face clean of the marker, and we both checked the time. It was nearly time for me to go and start reviewing at least what I did know for the test. I thought to Hedgehog:

'Okay Hedgehog, I'm going to my cabin to study more. I'll just sort of do my best to ignore if something leaks through okay? This is sorta weird the more I think about it. But, you know that since we both know what we think.'

Hedgehog replied in the affirmative, and I quickly left on my way to my cabin. The moment that this was done I needed to get this thing undone, otherwise it'd be really weird trying to write in my journal.

* * *

My test came and went. Hedgehog basically put all the right answers to most of the questions into my head. Most of the rest of the questions were about historical and political knowledge that Hedgehog was notably baffled about even though she could come to understand it easily through my thoughts. It made sense that she wouldn't really take a shine to such concepts, as they weren't really 'useful' to her. I mostly found them neat despite their impracticality. Perhaps that was how she felt about magic outside the island.

Once the test was done and over with, I made my way back to her cabin. I really had to go to the bathroom, since there was no way to take a break during the test without Betsy basically standing around outside the stall. Not something I was keen on. Hedgehog was already getting ready by the time I walked in the door. I had absolutely no reason to knock since she obviously knew I was coming to begin with.

Without further ado she tied my hair back, drew the symbol on my forehead again, and stuck our fingers into the copper wire loops around the crystal. A long moment passed between us, and she gave me a simple mental order.

'Okay, on the countdown of three, say your name, I'll say mine. Then say your favorite color, pizza topping, so on.'

I gave her a thumbs up, and she counted down. Three. Two. One.

"My name is Hluhogcy aboesthoms-" We both stopped simultaneously, flinching.

Our brains slammed together in an awful jumble, making me wince as I was thrown into confusion. Trying to speak in unison like that was awful, it was almost giving me a migraine as foreign information was stuck being shoved into my skull, all the while I was trying to think my own opposite thought. It was like, somewhere between my lips and my brain, her own information was being randomly added as radio noise to my own subconscious mind, which was just trying to make my mouth say some words.

'Uh... one more time?' Hedgehog asked, and she counted down again.

Three... two... one...

"My favorite color is pretrembbl."

That time we toughed out the car crash of thoughts in our heads, but the same thing had happened. The two thoughts both of us were trying to squeeze out at once weren't going through. I thought to her.

'Is there any way to make this hurt less?'

Concern leaked into the back of my mind as she responded, sharing my own anxiety.

'This is supposed to just work, and snap us both out of this because our individual thoughts should sort of fall out of tune. But it just hurts, a lot.'

I could tell Hedgehog was experiencing the same headache, pulsing right behind our eyes. It felt like it radiated all through our sinuses and eye sockets. The sort of full frontal head migraines that you could only get from being super dehydrated and trying to do something mentally strenuous. Except both of us were fine, and this had just evolved into a super huge problem. Hedgehog sensed my worry snowballing off of her own. Or was it my worry causing hers to multiply? These emotions were hard to sort out when we felt the same.

'Okay um, I don't really know what to do if I get stuck at this part. Honestly, I never expected this to work. But now we're... stuck. Like this...' 

'... until the witches figure it out or we tell them, huh?' I finished her thought for her.

Hedgehog replied with a regretful affirmative between us. We needed some sort of excuse for this to have happened. Simultaneously, we both thought.

'Just tell them we were trying to study together and got stuck like this.' The idea formed with both our voices in our heads at once, in unison.

She nodded, and decided it'd be time to go get Betsy. Susie would blow a gasket if she figured out that Hedgehog was doing magic again. I quietly waited, really wishing I could just go to the bathroom at this point without introducing some really weird feelings into the mix with Hedgehog. Of course, Hedgehog knew that... because we knew everything we thought together. There was a respect there though, that we really did just want this to stop so we could go back to having the privacy of our own thoughts.

I waited only about a few minutes. Hedgehog met with Betsy and it all felt like it was going well from what I could fathom of Hedgehog's mental state. However, out of nowhere, we were suddenly in Alice's cottage. In a puff of purple smoke we'd been transported there, with myself sitting cross-legged in a beanbag chair after the surprise shift in three dimensional space.

Betsy was standing there looking between us, and Alice was sitting at her table in pajamas, humming to herself. That was until we all appeared, and she sighed. Betsy began explaining next to immediately.

"Alice, you're best with emotional and sympathetic magic. They've gone and fused their heads into one. Which would be fine if they could undo it, but it looks like they can't think different enough thoughts to yank away. They tolerate each other too well."

Alice raised her eyebrows and drew her wand out of the pocket of her pajama pants, seeming pretty enthused at the whole situation. 

"Oh wow, that's pretty neat. Should I snap the link or what should I do Betsy?" She asked, looking to her equine friend.

The other witch gave a shrug, not knowing what would be worse. Hedgehog was oozing nervousness through our mental connection. It was making me nervous, and starting to ramp into an emotion I didn't really know how to deal with. I might even call it approaching a panic attack. After a ponderous pause, Alice spoke.

"Well the way it looks by the symbol you drew, you messed up. You guys are too harmonized to pull each other apart. Plus, you didn't even make the emergency break in the symbol in case you needed to stop it."

Hedgehog piped up, an interjection exploding out of her. I nearly shifted forwards in my seat as well, but realized I had nothing to say. Hedgehog's words that had nearly erupted from me.

"Hey I did! Just... the first time, which we erased because Lucy was embarrassed about having the symbol on everywhere."

Betsy arched a brow. Both of us knew in that moment that she understood we'd been cheating on her test. However, it was also Betsy. She didn't really care, since that was between me and the education system. Rather, she just cared about our overall well-being. She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.

"Okay you two, so there's two options. Alice can use her strong emotional magic to literally shatter the connection, which will probably hurt a lot, or you two can keep trying to seperate on your own."

The idea of it hurting a lot struck us as pretty weird. Mostly because the witches usually didn't care if something was uncomfortable if it meant they'd be solving some bigger issue. Especially Susie. However for them to bring it up as particularly painful...

Hedgehog mirrored my thought as well. 'Hurt a lot' in the context of mental magic usually meant it felt like your head was developing a seam along the skull plates and your brain was being pushed through those like clay dough being forced through a mold. We exchanged glances, our anxiety playing off of each other. It multiplied to an extent that both of us were starting to sweat. Our heartbeats sped up, and it hurt a bit to breathe. Two times the brain power, twice the emotions.

Alice spoke up to break the silence. "You're not gonna have a lot of privacy, and the magic will only go away once you get off the island again and go back out into the normal world."

It was such a hard decision, and my heart was hurting from being forced to choose what would probably be days of agony or just trying to keep separating our thoughts. Surely we could do that, we were both smart as could be. That thought got both me and her to start relaxing. We were smart, capable and independent girls. We didn't need anyone to help us if we managed to get ourselves into this mess. Not that I knew anything about magic. I knew a whole lot about logic though, and between us we would for sure be able to do it.

Hedgehog spoke up first. "I think we'll just keep trying to do it ourselves, okay?"

The one to reply was Betsy, who nodded, crossing her arms.

"Okay, but just keep in mind that the longer this goes on, the worse things get for you. So you'd better be trying really hard."

Both me and Hedgehog gave a nod. Alice chimed in.

"Yeah, the connection only gets stronger, and the long term effects are sorta super weird."

We didn't need any more coaxing, and I stood to walk towards the door. Swiftly Hedgehog followed, and we bade goodbye to both of them. It was a stiff, uncomfortable walk back to Hedgehog's cabin. I had to go to the bathroom so bad I felt like I'd explode. The temptation was there to just do my business and have Hedgehog try and pretend she didn't feel my biologically triggered emotions of relief weren't coming through.

Once we got there I sat on the bed... clenching my hands in my lap. We'd messed up big time. We had to figure out a way to fix this. But if I didn't use her bathroom I'd probably die soon. She could sense my desperation, so it became hers as well, and magnified it further. I grit my teeth, and walked to the bathroom.

Very awkwardly... an oppressively, stiflingly awkward minute passed in which I close my eyes, trying to think distracting thoughts about algebra. Anything but what I saw, trying not to give any details, trying not to ponder any part of myself in my brain. Regardless, what came through was the long sigh that did escape me, and the rush of relief was factored by two between us. I was crimson as I finished up as swiftly as I could and washed my hands, returning to her.

We needed to find a solution to this, and fast. I'd die if I had to do that again.


	2. Me

The rest of the afternoon passed by as we tried our best to disentangle our shared stream of thoughts. Everything we did ultimately ended up failing, though. From trying to recite our names at the same time, to trying to think about our different opinions. Neither of us wanted to do something that would outright make the other mad, but frustration began to dig its claws into us as day turned to evening. We were no more successful than last time. Both of us sported a splitting headache that brought an irritation, magnified between the two of us. We were realizing quickly that twice the brainpower to share between each other was both a blessing and a horrible curse. Our frustration at our lack of progress wasn't adding; it felt like it was multiplying.

Eventually both of us turned to one of the topics we'd been afraid of moving towards; the friends we shared. Hedgehog only had a few, as did I. It was a selective process, after all, since we were both busy. Not to mention picky. She turned her mind to Oscar, and I flung out the first emotions and thoughts that came to my mind.

'He's pretty cute, and I think he needs to learn to be independent.'

Hedgehog gave pause, blinking at me. We were sitting on either end of the bed, notepads in our laps. She clearly did not share the same outlook, and countered back.

'Oscar is oblivious and he needs to learn to actually be functional, before he can be independent.'

I squinted at her behind my glasses. I was skeptical of her real motives behind that idea, but at the same time, she seemed genuine. She detected my suspicion and crossed her arms defensively, thinking.

'I just think that Oscar needs someone to actually help him function.'

I retorted. 'Maybe you should try and give him some space to be functional on his own, then? He's lost without you.'

Aggression spurred within us, and soon we weren't really exchanging coordinated thoughts anymore. It was more flashes of how we felt, and it dissolved quickly into us just being upset. However, she came in much less clear than before. Was this working? I got even more angry as I thought it was working, but rather than back off, Hedgehog suddenly erupted into my headspace again, flooding my mind with her position on the topic, expressing them in fast slideshows and memories of Oscar being helpless, acting like a stooge, or generally being... Oscar. Every single one involved her, but I reeled from the sudden sensations in my head. I yelled out loud.

"You idiot, we were so close and you ruined it!"

Hedgehog's mind fell silent, as did mine. I relayed back to her in similar snapshots of how I felt a moment ago, so close to fracturing the connection, before she'd suddenly harmonized with me again through her anger. I stopped after a second, realizing that we weren't communicating in single thoughts or our ambient emotions anymore. We could communicate memories and images from our heads. The instant that realization dawned on me, it dawned on her. Between us, the frustration was boiling over. We'd had one chance and pretty much lost it because she wanted to enforce her opinion and got enraged. Admittedly, I had gotten there first, but mostly because of her own stuck-up pride refusing to see reason.

As I thought about these things, Hedgehog seemed to grow meek, and guilt flooded her. I understood her outburst on some level, and she was sorry. I couldn't hold it against her. We were still stuck together at the end of the day. She looked at the clock, and through our link, showed me how it looked. It read half-past eight at night. We both sighed. This wasn't getting us anywhere, and we'd just failed spectacularly at our one chance. This would have to continue in the morning, or one of us would throw a punch or two the other's way. We could still be angry in harmonization, but we couldn't seem to break away from how each other felt, when it was so hard to tell whose emotions were whose. When we did fall out of harmony, the other person possibly wouldn't know what the other felt, and accidentally synchronize again. It was a clever trap of our own design.

We exchanged a look. It was time to give it a rest. We both stood up and I moved to leave, before glancing back at Hedgehog. I thought to her:

'I'm going to sleep. See you in the morning.'

Her only real reply was an affirmative mental recognition of my statement. Opening the door to make my leave, I was bathed in cool moonlight. A thick gibbous moon hung in the sky overhead, watching those below. The walk back to my cabin was quiet. Once I had returned, I went downstairs to my bathroom. I set my glasses in the sink and then turned to the shower, starting it so that I could bathe at last. Today was an outright awful experience and I wanted to just wash it all away. 

I got the vague feeling in my mind that Hedgehog was probably doing the same. My mind thought over it, and pondered what to think of her knowing I was bathing. The answer was fairly simple on that front; I could just ignore that fact. She sensed that, and sent back an affirmative that she was indeed bathing by sending be a brief feeling of dampness onto my shoulders. This connection was strange, it was like we could focus on a sensation or something like that to give it to the other person... whether they wanted that or not. I didn't appreciate it.

I undressed and bathed as quick as I could, focusing on the ceiling tiles with my eyes. This was stupid, and I hated it. I was actively trying to not focus on anything my body felt to avoid giving a clear sensation, or vision to Hedgehog. Of course she was doing the same. It was like showering one stall away from someone; both of you know you're there, both of you understand it's awkward, but there's a mutual understanding to just ignore each other, and not say anything.

At least that was what I thought, until Hedgehog suddenly spoke to me, pushing a vision of herself holding a set of pajamas in a mirror up to herself.

'Do you think that I look good in pink? Or are my usual pajamas okay?'

I rolled my eyes so hard I hoped Hedgehog felt them nearly fade up into my eye sockets.

'You look fine in either. Pink is better though, in my opinion. I'm trying to shower here.'

'Sorry.'

Without another word she mentally fell silent, though I felt a self-satisfaction radiating into me. It certainly wasn't mine, since I knew I wasn't satisfied in the least with this scenario. Hedgehog was a lot more adaptable to crazy scenarios like this though, since the werewolf episode.

Once I was done, I quickly dried up and threw myself into my bed, dressing into my nightgown beneath the covers. Once it was all done, I shut my eyes, eager to let sleep take me. Hedgehog did the same, and eventually, we both drifted off.

* * *

My dreams were full with strange feelings leaping into existence, then vanishing or morphing into others. There was a feeling of whimsical randomness to them that didn't usually show itself when I slept. However as they carried on, I found it coalescing into something coherent. I sat in front of my Dad, humming to myself as I ate my breakfast. My homework was open on the table, and backpack beside the table leg. I kicked my feet idly. Soon enough, the clock struck seven. He gave me a smile, then waved to me. He had to go to work, and I had to get to the bus stop. I hurried up and drank the rest of my orange juice, then stood up. 

As I stood up, I reached down to check my pockets. I felt a pair of house keys in there. Confusion washed through me. The more I looked, the more out of place I felt. It was the opposite of a sense of nostalgia. I didn't know why any of this was familiar. Did I live here? Where was I? I looked towards the table and concluded that this person didn't look like my Dad. I began to panic. I looked at my hands. My hands were yellow.

* * *

I jolted awake, gripping my chest over my heart. I looked at the clock to see that it was two in the morning. A deep exhale escaped me, and I tried looking over at the telephone-can that sat beside my bed. Oscar certainly wasn't awake. I thought of what to do, and I decided... I would quietly observe Lucy's dream. I shut my eyes, knowing that I wouldn't be able to fall back asleep after my very odd nightmare. I focused heavily on the small stream of stimuli coming from the back of my mind. 

I got small bits of it at first, but after a while I wedged my senses closer to that sort of tear in my head. This probably wasn't super smart, but after that nightmare I needed to jolt awake Lucy if possible. So maybe this was necessary. In honesty, it was mostly curiosity. Not that I'd admit that openly to anyone. I'd even convince myself it wasn't the case, if it meant keeping it from my headmate.

Soon enough, Lucy's dream came into perspective. I got flickering thoughts of her observing a boy in a park. It was Oscar, and she felt quite fondly of approaching him. I focused harder on the connection between us, and stilled my thoughts. It felt like the mental space closed between us, and I would have panicked if I had been thinking rationally. However, my nosy self wanted to know what was going on. Oscar was supposedly involved. I gritted my teeth with how hard I was focusing, before eventually, finally, if I closed my eyes and concentrated, I could see vaguely what was going on visually in the dream. Her thoughts were mainly to go talk to him, and she sluggishly did.

She spoke with him about the weather there in her city, wherever it was. Lucy was glad he had come to visit her. Curiosity flared inside of me, but that actually caused an issue. She became curious too due to my emotional interjection. The idea occurred to me that, because I was conscious and she wasn't, I could probably push emotions and thoughts in without her being able to know their source. Especially with this newfound mental proximity.

However, I didn't want her to continue as she was. The idea was sparking in her mind to start holding Oscar's hand, and I couldn't have that. I called into her mind rather bluntly.

'Lucy get up, your dreams are leaking into mine.'

I felt Lucy jolt awake. I was still in my bedroom with my eyes shut, and I could make out her bedroom just barely, even though it was incredibly blurry. I felt her about to question me, so rather than accept her questioning, I just was out with it.

'It got worse while we were asleep. I'm starting to see through your eyes. I'm going to open mine, if you can see through mine at the same time this is gonna be a huge problem.'

I then opened them, and alarm flooded Lucy. That was a clear affirmative. She scrambled over to her bedside stand and put on her glasses, allowing both me and her to see around the bedroom. None of our other senses were tied, but certainly our sight was. It was very odd to have something I could see not be tied to my motion whatsoever, and instead be tied to someone else's will. As she turned on the light, I winced despite not being there. She thought towards me in a big jumble of confused words.

'Okay, what are we going to do? I can't function like this, moving around feels super weird. I don't like this, Hedgehog, let's just go to Alice and get this whole thing sorted out.'

I countered. 'Well, Alice is asleep because it's about half-past two in the morning. Let's both get up and try to coordinate ourselves to do something while dealing with both visual inputs.'

She seemed loathe to comply. After some thought, she decided that it made some form of sense, and got up. It was bizarre having to coordinate with what was effectively another sense of vision overlapping with my own. It took both of us a few minutes to get used to it, stepping forwards, then back, and waving our arms around to try and get a grip on how we were oriented in space. She thought to me that we would both probably respond to light the same way, and I concurred. That could be an issue if one of us were in a dim room, and the other was in bright sunlight.

Another few moments passed, and the blurriness faded from what I could see of her vision. Our senses were now chained together on that front.

'Okay, any bright ideas on how to fix this now?' She prodded me.

I took a deep breath, and let out it out through my gritted teeth. She already knew the answer of course, but she was just doing that to pick at my patience. We'd only slept for a meager five hours.

'No, I don't.'

I couldn't help but feel slight frustration at Lucy. I had no shortage of curiosity about what was happening to us, and even if I barely would admit it, her being irate at me over this whole accident was getting on my nerves. It was an honest mistake that I was interested to see the results of. I wasn't being mean or messing things up because I was having fun. The difference was, I wasn't treating this like the sky was falling. I was just taking mental notes, not panicking. The only times I wasn't remaining collected was when Lucy was instigating.

'I can hear you, you know. You're not thinking or feeling very quietly.' Lucy sarcastically commented.

'Yeah, well maybe I wanted you to.'

Irritation sparked inside of me again, then inside of Lucy. Maybe the other way around, not that I cared. She was staring at her ceiling in bed, from what I could tell. If she was flipping out about this whole thing now I wondered if we could even break ourselves up fast enough for her to not have a full blown panic attack. What happened if we started to share hearing? Other senses like touch would probably cause her to have a heart attack.

'But why aren't you worried about that though?' Lucy pressed.

'Because we're in this together, and it's just between us. It's not like it's being broadcast to the whole world. You'll be okay.'

Rage built up in her as she shot back. 'I never wanted to share it between us! I just wanted some test answers, not some deal with the devil to share all my innermost thoughts with some creepy spell nerd!'

Mentally, I balked at her words. I was the only one who came to help her with that test! I was the only one keeping calm! Not just for my own sake either, but for hers, too. I pushed my discipline through to her and grit my teeth, seething at this point.

'That's way off-base, and you know it. Calm down, seriously. You're being irrational.'

I saw Lucy get up, stepping into her slippers and striding to the door of her cabin. Worry soaked me for the first time this evening. She did not respond at all to me trying to incept some emotional maturity into her. It seemed that she still had every inclination as to which emotions were hers. Either that, or she simply didn't trust her own emotions anymore and was behaving purely off of her gut instincts.

'Where are you going?' I asked, watching through her eyes to see her striding up the hill.

'I'm going to stop this. I'm done, clearly you messed up the spell bad enough that not even the smartest girls on the island can stop it. I'm getting Alice to break the spell.'

I felt fear flood my whole body. She wasn't serious, was she? One quick mental check made it clear that she was. Lucy was ready to take whatever pain was involved if it just meant having the privacy of her own thoughts again. I pleaded with her silently in my head. We could do it ourselves, it didn't have to be so painful. Even if we weren't successful it was just until the end of the summer, and we could take rigorous notes on what happened to us so that we could maybe figure out how to help others who made the same mistake. There was so much to be gained even if we didn't succeed! Why was she acting like this?!

Lucy soon stormed up to Alice's cabin. I braced myself, squeezing my head between my pillows and the mattress. I saw a knock, and Alice stepped to the door a couple seconds later. She was in her pajamas, but by her expression and nodding along, she was clearly lucid enough to understand what Lucy was saying. Alice motioned her inside and told her to lay down in her bed, and bite down on a mouth guard she summoned with her wand. Dread seeped into me, and partially into Lucy. She wasn't going to heed to her own emotions at this point, however. She understood she couldn't trust them anymore because any one might be from me.

I saw a flick of a wand, and then I saw a blinding flash of white light. I forced my face into my pillow and let out a nearly soundless cry into it, unable to verbalize the pain I felt. It was like someone had pushed a hot iron directly down onto my brain. I felt half-blind and had no way to communicate it to besides to writhe in my bed, my nails tearing holes in the sheets. Once the pure shock of the severing faded I just let out a tiny pitiful sob into my pillow, my whole head feeling like I'd just been in a head-on car accident. Every heartbeat sent a sharp stab of pain through my eye sockets, sinuses, the base of my neck, and jaw.

I rolled out of bed, clutching my head, and got out some of the headache medicine I had stashed in my bedside drawer. Barely sorting out a slightly higher than normal dosage, they were kicked back in to time with some water. Even swallowing hurt, making fresh tears spring into my eyes. Being functional wasn't even in the cards for the next few days. Maybe even into next week. Maybe my werewolf transformation would heal it when I turned, but until then I was basically crippled. My senses felt stunted, and I felt isolated mentally. Maybe I had been growing dependent on having her there in my thoughts?

Regardless, all there was now, was an unbearable cluster headache and regret.


End file.
